Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It’s common for me to hear from wives who aren’t sure how they should be acting toward their husband, now that he has announced his desire for a separation. Many fluctuate between wanting to greet him with anger, wanting to act cold toward him, or wanting to be extremely loving in the hopes that he will change his mind. It’s a nice thought to think that you can and should be completely transparent during this process and always say what is on your mind while being forthcoming with your feelings, but very few of us are able to pull this off. And the reason is that we do not want to become hurt. We do not want to act loving and then be rejected. Or, we don’t want to show our true feelings if this is only going to turn him off more and cause him to distance himself further.

I might hear from a wife who explains it this way: “my husband has told me that he wants to separate and he really won’t go into specifics as to why this is. I have asked him if there is someone else because honestly, this is the only legitimate reason I can come up with for him doing this to me.  We haven’t been like newlyweds lately, but who is? I was researching ways to spice up our marriage, but I never dreamed that he would want a separation. I have been falling all over myself asking him why but he swears that there is no one else and that he just needs his own space for a little while to determine where he wants to take his life. So my next step has been to try to be loving and accommodating toward him, but this hasn’t done me any good. It seems like the more loving I am toward him, the more he pulls away. I was talking this over with one of my coworkers and she said that I’m approaching it all wrong. She asked me why would I reward his behavior by being loving toward him? She says that he is doing something incredibly selfish and therefore I needed to pull away from him to show him just how lonely it is going to get for him. I understand her thinking, at least somewhat. But I am not sure if I can pull this off. It isn’t in my nature to be cold to my husband. And if I’m being honest, I am desperate to have him not leave me. How in the world can I act otherwise? How are you supposed to act toward a husband who wants a separation?”

I believe that the best answer to this question truly does depend upon the personalities involved and the reason for the separation. Sometimes, if you attempt to stray too far away from your true personality, your spouse is very likely to doubt your sincerity. They will know that you are only acting in a certain way in order to get a certain behavior or action out of them.

There is definitely a fine line between allowing your true emotions to have full reign (and potentially create awkwardness and him avoiding you) and pretending to feel something that you absolutely don’t so that you’re really lying.

After going through this myself and watching my husband pull further and further away the more needy and loving I appeared to be, I decided that it wasn’t always to my benefit to act in the way that my heart was guiding me. Because, if I’m being completely honest about it, my heart was guiding me to be someone who I wasn’t particular proud of – that woman who was motivated by fear and who always tried to guilt, shame or beg her husband home simply because she couldn’t stand to be without him and was frightened by the thought of being alone.

And although this is exactly how I felt and letting out these feelings were a relief, my husband didn’t find this particularly attractive. Nor did he find it endearing when I was overly affectionate. In fact, the more I reached out, the more he pulled back. So I learned to keep a loose lid on my feelings.

What I mean by this is that while I didn’t lie or act in a way that was completely false, I did try to take the attitude that although I didn’t really want a separation, I accepted the fact that he did and I was going to use the time to do my own soul searching and to work on myself.

And after this shift, a funny thing happened. My husband stopped avoiding me. I believe the fact that I was showing respect for myself made him respect me also. And I believe he was curious as to what brought about this change. I want to be clear. I always treated my husband with respect and kindness. I didn’t really lash out. I didn’t pretend that I didn’t care about him. He knew that I did. He knew that if I had my way, the separation would be over. But, since that wasn’t going to happen immediately, my stance was that I was going to make the best of it and I was going to make it work for me.

So I treated him like the important person that he was in my life. But I wasn’t overly affectionate or desperate. I stopped centering every conversation on our marriage. I treated him like someone whose opinion I highly valued, but whose opinion was not more important than my own.

This is just what worked for me. If you are getting good results by being completely transparent and showing every ounce of your true feelings, then I don’t see any reason to stop, unless the results also stop. But if you aren’t, then maybe you want to hold back a little on being over affectionate or overly accommodating. This doesn’t mean that you are rude or cold. It means that this is new territory for you and that you are coping as best as you can while having respect for yourself and for him.

I know that this is a very difficult time.  I know that it can feel like you’re wandering around without a map.  But I found that you can almost never go wrong when you focus on yourself and on those things that you know strengthen you.  If it helps, you can read more about how I got through this process on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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